Forum:Domain update
Hello, Effective May 22nd, this community will have its URL switched to have the ".wikia.com" domain become the primary domain. The previous primary domain of this wikia http://en.memory-alpha.org will instead redirect to http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com. The previous domain will continue to work to lead people to this community, and this will not affect the sitename or anything else this community does to identify itself. This was a difficult decision for sure – we understand the pride that comes from having a highly unique URL attached to Memory Alpha, and keeping your custom domain highly visible was one of the requests that were made when this community joined Wikia. However, as Wikia has grown and - more critically – as the internet standards have evolved and changed, trying to support this custom setup has become increasingly difficult. The direct reason for this change is a forthcoming update to our authentication backend. This system has a litany of advantages to the default MediaWiki authentication methods, but adding more code to support authentication across custom domains would chip away at a number of its features and advantages. With this new login feature users will have: * True universal login. Logging into one wikia will log them into all. This has been mostly true for a long time, but with each custom domain wikia, users have had to re-login. * Improved mobile experience. Wikia anticipates by the end of the year that over 50% of our traffic will come from mobile browsers. We are working hard to provide better user experiences for that platform and this login will be easily portable from desktop into mobile. * Improved performance. Faster code means better SEO and happier users. * New security features. MediaWiki's code has been slow to evolve in this area. By moving to our own login system, we will not only be able to bring in some of the more modern security authentication methods being used by many major websites, but also respond more fluidly and quickly to security concerns. I'm happy to explain this decision more as needed. Please let me know if you have any questions. --BertH (help forum | blog) 18:53, May 19, 2015 (UTC) :If anyone is having login issues -- specifically seeing messages about "Session has timed out" -- please go to http://community.wikia.com (or almost any other Wikia community) and log out (if needed) and then log in. Then return here and you should be all set. The URL change seems to have caused a login cookie issue for some users, and we're looking into the issue. The solution I just outlined should resolve it for individual users though. Apologies for any confusion or inconvenience. --BertH (help forum | blog) 17:20, May 24, 2015 (UTC) ::Bert, I have also had difficulty with making posts; if I come here directly and attempt to save a post I get stuck on the Preview of the post, even when I click Save. I don't have the issue when I arrive here from another Wikia wiki. 31dot (talk) 01:11, May 25, 2015 (UTC) ::::Hello, we've corrected the cookie-related issue that was causing the login inconsistencies. Please report any further problems via but we don't expect any further trouble. Apologies for the difficulties these past couple days. --BertH (help forum | blog) 18:29, May 25, 2015 (UTC)